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Towards Orthodox-Catholic ReconciliationWed, 24 Jun 2015 14:10:14 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/Comment on Rethinking Eucharistic Discipline by Ryan Closehttps://eirenikon.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/rethinking-eucharistic-discipline/#comment-6334
Wed, 24 Jun 2015 14:10:14 +0000http://eirenikon.wordpress.com/?p=535#comment-6334I am one of those Orthodox Christians who continues to remain with the Holy Orthodox Church despite thinking that there are no major differences between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. The so-called differences are based on caricatures, on reactionary anti-western polemics. I have been looking at specific caricatures and I agree with the Orthodox-Catholic Ecumenical commission, the main thing that separates us is the matter of Church organization. And there was never any one way of governing the Church in the past, so we really should not expect any kind of artificial uniformity now. Furthermore, the Roman Catholic Church has been emphasizing the collegial aspects of her ecclesiology for decades.

As for the standard caricatures, (1) the Filioque has been settled, the Catholic Church does not affirm the Filioque in the Greek language because they admit that in the Greek language the phrase expresses a heretical doctrine, and they can quote Eastern Orthodox Fathers and Theologians that support whatever it is that the Latin phrase is supposed to mean. But either way they support the doctrine that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone so that the Father aught to be understood as the sole principle of origin of both the Divine Son and Holy Spirit. (2) According to the Roman Catholic Church original sin is not inherited guilt, is not a “personal fault” in any one but Adam. (3) Created Grace, Roman Catholic theologians speak of created grace! (4) Orthodoxy allows contraception. Well no they don’t. Nothing in our tradition condones the use of contraception and the Orthodox hierarch all wrote that they accepted the teaching of Humane Vitae. One even said that God spoke through the pope! It is certain Orthodox Christians who have accepted “doctrinal development” on this issue.

I could go on and on and have documented a lot of this with quotes and references.

How do I justify staying in the Orthodox Church. First, for better or worse, the Orthodox Church is my Church. I would need serious reason for changing.

Second, When my priest asks me in Confession if I doubt any doctrines of Orthodox Church I can honestly say that I do not. When examining what the Orthodox Church teaches, especially in positive non-polemic writings, I accept it as the Revelation of God to man by supernatural faith. If I encounter a caricature of the Roman Catholic position ( an accusation that RC believe X when RC obviously do not believe X ) in the writings of Orthodox theologians I accept that they were misinformed. I don’t get all hung up about that. Furthermore, I can source authoritative canonical statements of the Orthodox Churches formally declaring that “Transubstantiation,” for example, is a doctrine of the Orthodox Church, so I know that not everything so-and-so anti-western polemicists says I have to believe or not believe is necessarily Apostolic.

Third, the entirety of Orthodox theology is totally encompassed within the Roman Catholic Church so that if I converted I would be leaving nothing behind. To be clear, if I converted and you asked me, “do you believe Y?” and Y was anything that was genuinely Orthodox, say any positive teaching in St John of Damascus’ “Exact Exposition” or “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology” or Lossky’s “Mystical Theology of the Orthodox Church,” I would whole heartedly say “Yes!” Fourth, since from the Roman Catholic point of view, the Eastern Orthodox Churches have salvific sacraments, I need not convert.

Lastly, I do not convert because the Roman Catholic Church is currently in a state of liturgical chaos, with sacrilegious protestantized masses, and tolerates cults such as the charismatic movement and the Neocatecuminal Way within her ranks. These, and not the doctrinal caricatures, present the real impediment to unity today, in my opinion.

But one thing that I miss, not being a Roman Catholic, is the opportunity to daily partake of the Holy and Divine Mysteries of Christ for the sanctification of my soul and body, for a more effectual growth in grace, holiness, and communion with the Holy Spirit.

]]>Comment on North American Orthodox-Catholic Response to Ravenna by Michaël de Verteuilhttps://eirenikon.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/north-american-orthodox-catholic-response-to-ravenna/#comment-4212
Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:43:36 +0000http://eirenikon.wordpress.com/?p=360#comment-4212While dormant, the blog is still open. So there is no inherent problem in resurrecting discussion on a three-year old post.

One point I don’t think Orthodox have internalized enough is that Catholic theology does not acknowledge the existence of “conciliarity at the patriarchal level.” Rome has never (and I mean “never”) bought into the idea of the Pentarchy as a constitutive element of the Church’s esse, while many Orthodox ecclesiologists appear to take it as a given. In contrast, in Catholic theology primacy and conciliarity at the universal are both dominical and thus core features of the Church’s constitution.

Regional primacy (including Rome’s) and conciliarity at the regional level have been sanctioned both by tradition and by ecumenical councils. While they weren’t mandated by Christ, they remain part of the Church’s lived ecclesial experience. The idea of patriarchal conciliarity (e.g. Pentarchy) on the other hand, in the Catholic view is neither dominical nor conciliar, and has never had any practical reality in that Rome has never presided over or even participated in such an exercise either in person, through legates or by correspondence. Whatever its validity in post-schism Orthodoxy, in the context of the undivided Church, the notion is strictly an a-historical fiction. It may be that the Ravenna document went too far in this direction, and that this explains the Roman reserve on the issue.

]]>Comment on North American Orthodox-Catholic Response to Ravenna by Will Cohenhttps://eirenikon.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/north-american-orthodox-catholic-response-to-ravenna/#comment-4209
Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:06:20 +0000http://eirenikon.wordpress.com/?p=360#comment-4209Oops — I just noticed that I posted a response to a three year old thread! Shows how non-blog savvy I am. Sorry for the mistake.
]]>Comment on North American Orthodox-Catholic Response to Ravenna by Will Cohenhttps://eirenikon.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/north-american-orthodox-catholic-response-to-ravenna/#comment-4208
Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:51:02 +0000http://eirenikon.wordpress.com/?p=360#comment-4208In case it’s of interest, there is an article in volume 53, number 4 (2009) of the St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly entitled, “The Concept of ‘Sister Churches’ in Orthodox-Catholic Relations in the 12th and 21st Centuries”, which touches on some of the issues that have been raised in this thread. (I wrote it; also a dissertation on the subject, so I am well aware of my potential of sounding annoying and tendentious.) One way of boiling down what I say there is that the CDF’s 2000 Note seems to me to risk pitting primacy and conciliarity (especially conciliarity at the patriarchal level) against one another rather than affirming their complementarity, as is done for example in the 2007 Ravenna Statement of the Joint International Commission. The latter part of the 20th century, in general, seemed to be the era of emphasizing conciliarity in all sorts of ways (communion ecclesiology, etc) and saw the RCC do a certain amount of reorienting of itself ecclesiologically eastward, while the 21st has seen a reemphasis on primacy and challenged the Orthodox East to open itself to western gifts, in particular the gift of primacy at the universal level. It would be a shame, though, if in the process of bringing primacy rightly back to the fore, conciliarity would then be relegated to the margins somehow — as I think has somewhat occurred with the overly tight and not always entirely sound restrictions on the use of “sister churches” and also with the removal of the title of patriarch of the west from the Annuario Pontificio. But on the other hand a healthy synthesis seems more and more within reach and is suggested by numerous theologians both Catholic and Orthodox. Adam DeVille’s recent book Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy (which I figure has been mentioned on this blog) does a nice job of showing this.
]]>Comment on A request by evagriushttps://eirenikon.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/a-request-2/#comment-4199
Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:25:24 +0000http://eirenikon.wordpress.com/?p=617#comment-4199http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/orthodoxy-and-the-roman-papacy-ut-unum-sint-and-the-prospects-of-east-west-unity/14624346

A new book out on this semingly eternal subject.

]]>Comment on Bishop Hilarion: God’s Mercy is immeasurable by Frank Hatchhttps://eirenikon.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/bishop-hilarion-gods-mercy-is-immeasurable/#comment-4198
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:35:03 +0000http://eirenikon.wordpress.com/?p=49#comment-4198“Hear and hear, but do not understand,
see and see, but do not perceive,”

To break the restriction of a linear time sequence, the Lost need empirical data – uncorrupted, honest data. However, the Lost have filtered all their data with a scientific-religious presumption: a finite universe with a finite number of dimensions.

The Lost do not understand, nor do they perceive their conflict with the Infinite Universe and Infinite number of dimensions…